If You Are Finnish

If you're Finnish...

You are familiar with many TV personalities and celebrities, Finnish and foreign. The latter are, in decreasing order of probability, American, English, Scandinavian (rarely), French or German (very, very rarely).

You believe in the news on TV and in the newspapers. In fact, you are used to believing in most of what you read or hear -- people are supposed to "say what they mean" or remain silent.

You have (or you plan to have) a family, which means a spouse and 1 to 3 children (but not having one doesn't mean a catastrophe). It's possible that you are a single or divorced parent, even a mother who has never wanted to marry or live with the father of her child(ren).

You may state that "old people should be respected", but you know you don't have to obey your parents, at least not if you are over 18.

You are accustomed with the society (rather than families, churches or charity organizations) taking care of the poor, sick and disabled. When your mother gets too old and sick to live alone (and that means really old and sick), it's normal to put her in a nursing home, not to take her to live with your family.

You may like football (if you are a young urban male, perhaps even the strange American version of so-called "football"). In general, however, you feel most comfortable watching sports where people wear helmets: Formula One (you know that it is dominated by Finns called Mika), ice-hockey or ski-jumping. Cricket is something incomprehensible, but for baseball you have a version of your own, the Finnish pesäpallo. "Skiing" means cross-country skiing, but if you are under 25, you might prefer the snowboard.

You have a vacation of at least a month a year and you do take it, preferably in July (although it is generally complained that "in Europe" nobody has vacations of more than a week and we should follow that trend). You spend it at your summer cottage, bathing in the sauna and swimming in the lake, or visiting...